![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This article explores passing as a way to gain insights into the multiple ways that processes of identification of enslaved individuals could occur in Castile, the heart of the Spanish empire. In a court case that began in 1552, the pressing matter at hand was whether Beatríz/Violante was, in fact, an india. Impersonations of freed persons did occur, and slave owners purposefully misidentified their slaves or conflated them with other, deceased slaves – a practice that became more widespread as imperial laws placed restraints on indigenous slave-owning practices in Castile. If, however, Beatríz/Violante was not an india but a mulatta, why did she think it was worth taking such a calculated but dangerous risk to gain her freedom? Through an examination of how early modern subjects comprehended the entangled and globalized nature of their changing world, we can gain a better understanding of notions of difference and practices of discrimination that were key to imperial governance and colonial rule.
Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks go to the Department of Anthropology at Western Washington University, the two anonymous readers for the Colonial Latin American Review, and to Ralph Bauer, Kathryn Burns, Maureen Garvie, Dana Leibsohn, James Loucky, Marcy Norton, Joanne Rappaport, Susanne Seales, and Preston Schiller for their generous critiques and support.
Notes on contributor
Nancy E. van Deusen is professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. The author of over thirty articles and four books, two of which have been translated into Spanish, her research ranges from the histories of Native American bondage in the Atlantic World (Global Indios: The Indigenous Struggle for Justice in Sixteenth-Century Spain [2015]), to gender relations and female Catholic spirituality in colonial Peru (Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima [forthcoming]). She is currently researching a book entitled ‘The Disappearance of the Past,’ which questions why the enslavement of over a million native Americans in the western hemisphere has disappeared from our narratives about the early modern period.
Notes
1. Lucena is located seventy-two kilometers to the southeast of Córdoba, and north of Málaga.
2. Just title refers to the legitimate reasons why slaves could be held as property, according to the Siete Partidas (Partida IV, Title XXI, Law I) and canon law: for just war and being taken as an enemy of the faith; those born of female slaves; and when a person is free and allows himself to be sold into slavery. In a court of law, normally a bill of sale or another notarized transaction was proof of bondage. In the case of indios, however, the 1542 Crown mandate meant providing additional documentation, including proof that the slave in question had been captured, interviewed and branded as a slave of just war or ransom by a Crown authority; and that the slave owner had official authorization to cross the ocean to Castile. Most slave owners could not provide such extensive proof (van Deusen 2015, 125–46).
3. My book, Global Indios (2015a), explores how physiognomy, legal practices of enslavement such as rescate (ransom) and just war, intimate relationships with other slaves and slave owners, and imperial and local geo-cultural determinants were used as sense-making tools by slaves and slave owners to determine and manipulate the legal and cultural construct of indio in a courtroom setting. An analysis of Violante’s case is another way by which we can understand how processes of identification occurred, in this instance, vis-à-vis other categories such as mulatto.
4. ‘Opening statement of appeal before the Council of the Indies,’ 10/III/1553, Iñigo de Mondragón on behalf of Alonso López, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 5. Unless otherwise indicated all archival citations refer to the AGI.
5. Even under the most restrictive systems of racial coding in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, for example, ambiguities in determining resemblance to one category or another made obtaining freedom possible (Hobbs Citation2014, 8–9, 30–31).
6. ‘Denunciation,’ 5/II/1552, AGI, Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 26.
7. ‘Presentation by Aguilar,’ 10/II/1552, Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 31.
8. ‘Questions on behalf of Alonso López,’ Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 89.
9. Slaves constituted 7.4 percent of the inhabitants of mid-sixteenth-century Seville (Stella Citation2000, 76).
10. The ransoming of captives was not limited to captive Christians in Muslim lands.
11. ‘Deposition Pedro Cataño,’ 12/II/1552, Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 33.
12. On the complex relationship between intimacy and violence and the roles of indias as both slaves, companions, and mothers to children of their Spanish masters, see van Deusen Citation2012; Mangan Citation2016.
13. ‘Testimony, Juan Martín Guerra,’ im. 85.
14. Justicia 836, no. 1, 1552, im. 33, 85, 96; López Beltrán Citation1999, 87–100; Mangan Citation2016.
15. ‘Deposition, Isabel Martín,’ 27/IV/1552, Justicia 836, n. 1, im. 64.
16. ‘Deposition, Pedro Miguel,’ Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 79–80; ‘Deposition Alonso Algarny,’ Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 82.
17. ‘Questions for interrogatory for Beatriz,’ Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 54; ‘Deposition, Juan Martín Guerra,’ im. 83.
18. ‘Protesta de Núñez,’ 18/II/1552, Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 36.
19. ‘Deposition Pedro Cataño,’ 12/II/1552, Justicia 836, no. 1, im. 33.
20. Here the reader might call to mind the colorful lawsuit launched when the sixteenth-century French peasant Arnaud du Tilh was caught impersonating Martin Guerre (Davis Citation1983).
21. ‘Deposition Guillermo de Santa Ana,’ 21/III/1552, Justicia 836, n. 1, im. 81; ‘Deposition Juan de la Madrid,’ im. 73; ‘Deposition Pedro Miguel,’ im. 79–80; ‘Deposition Alonso Algarny,’ im. 82; ‘Deposition Juan Martín de Guerra,’ im. 83.
22. ‘Deposition, Juana de Vera,’ im. 122.
23. ‘Deposition, Juana de Vera,’ im. 122–23.
24. ‘Deposition, Juana de Vera,’ im. 123.
25. ‘Deposition, Bartolomé Carreño,’ im. 56.
26. ‘Deposition, Bartolomé Carreño,’ im. 56.
27. ‘Deposition, Rodrigo de Rojas,’ im. 128–29.
28. According to William Phillips, the territory called ‘Guinea’ by the Spanish and Portuguese encompassed Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry (the Republic of Guinea), as well as parts of Mali and Burkina Faso (Phillips Citation2014, 64).
29. ‘Deposition, María de Gálvez,’ im. 143.
30. ‘Deposition, María de Gálvez,’ im. 143.
31. ‘Deposition, Francisco Márquez,’ im. 139.
32. ‘Deposition, María de Gálvez,’ im. 143.
33. ‘Deposition, Juan Márques,’ im. 153.
34. ‘Deposition, Juan Márques,’ im. 154.
35. ‘Carta presentada por Violante,’ im. 175.
36. ‘Carta presentada por Violante,’ im. 175.